Edit on GitHub
Jump to docs navigation

Field Types / Select field

Note: You are currently reading the documentation for Bolt 3.7. Looking for the documentation for Bolt 5.2 instead?

Choose from Preset values:

A drop-down list to make a pre-defined selection from. This field has many options and many possibilities but is less complicated than it might seem at first glance.

Basic Configuration:

        somevalue:
            type: select
            values: [ none, foo, bar ]

Example usage in templates:

{{ record.somevalue }}

Populating the values from a ContentType

You can also get the values from the records of a particular ContentType.

        somevalue:
            type: select
            values: mycontenttype/fieldname

To display multiple values simply separate them with commas.

For example to display both the id and title of 'pages':

        somevalue:
            type: select
            values: pages/id,title

If you wish to store another field or value from the original ContentType in your database, use the keys setting. If you do this, it will not store the 'id', but the value of the field you specify. For example:

        somevalue:
            type: select
            values: persons/lastname
            keys: slug

If the list is growing longer, there are a few ways to make it more manageable:

        somevalue:
            type: select
            values: programme/name
            sort: name
            autocomplete: true
            limit: 1000
  • The sort-option allows you to specify the sorting of the items in the select field. You can use any field, and to reverse the sort use a minus: -title, for example.
  • Enabling autocomplete will allow the user to use autocomplete typing to select a value from the field.
  • Use limit to limit the amount of items. Note that the default is 500, so if you have a long list, and you need to show them all to the user, raise this limit.

Finally you can pass filters to the query using the filter option. For a full reference of what can be passed to a where filter you can see the content fetching documentation.

In adition to filters on the ContentType values, you can use taxonomy conditions, as in the following example:

        somevalue:
            type: select
            values: pages/title
            filter: { categories: news }

You can then fetch the selected record by using the following code:

{% setcontent linkedpage = "pages" where { 'id': record.somevalue } returnsingle %}

Populating the values from multiple ContentTypes

To output multiple ContentTypes in the select list, use:

somevalue:
    type: select
    values: (events,news,pages)/title

As the field allows you to select multiple ContentTypes, upon saving it stores contenttype/id in the database.

You can then use this to fetch the selected record by using the following code, where somevalue in this instance may equal something like page/1:

{% setcontent linkeditem = record.somevalue returnsingle %}

Additional options

Selecting multiple values

You can also allow the user to select multiple values by setting the options multiple to true like this:

        somevalues:
            type: select
            values: [ none, foo, bar ]
            multiple: true

If you set it to multiple you will also have some different ways to use it in the templates.

For example if you want to see if bar was one of the selected values:

{% if 'bar' in record.somevalues %}
    ..
{% endif %}

Or if you want to print out the selected values in an ul:

<ul>
    {% for values in record.somevalues %}
        <li>{{ values }}</li>
    {% endfor %}
</ul>

Or if you just want to print them out after one another separated by commas:

{{ record.somevalues|join(', ') }}

Defining values as a hash

The options in the list can be defined as either a 'map' or a 'hash'. If you use a list (like above), the options visible in the drop-down list will be the values stored in the database. If you want to store other values, you can use a so-called 'hash'.

In the following example, 'yes', 'no' and 'undecided' will be stored in the database:

        somevalue:
            type: select
            values: { 'yes': "Yes", 'no': "No", 'undecided': "Well, it can go either way" }

Making the selected values sortable

If you want to control the order that selected values are saved and displayed in then you can use the sortable option. This is especially useful when linking to other ContentTypes since it can give an ordered relation. Usage:

        pages:
            type: select
            values: pages/id,slug
            multiple: true
            autocomplete: true
            sortable: true


Edit this page on GitHub
Couldn't find what you were looking for? We are happy to help you in the forum, on Slack or on Github.